Wit throws a single ray, separated from the rest,--red, yellow,
blue, or any intermediate shade,--upon an object; never white
light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effect
from wit,--all the prismatic colors,--but never the object as it
is in fair daylight.
- [Wit]

Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit
your reader's mind, or miss it--but talking is like playing at a
mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you
have time enough, you can't help hitting it.
- [Talking]

Yet there are graves, whose rudely shapen sod
Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod;
Graves where the verdure has not dar'd to shoot
Where the chance wildflower has not fix'd its root,
Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a name,
The eternal record shall at length proclaim
Pure as the holiest in the long array
Of hooded, mitred, or tiara'd clay!
- [Churchyards]

His home!--the Western giant smiles,
And turns the spotty globe to find it;--
This little speck the British isles?
'Tis but a freckle,--never mind it.
- A Good Time Going [England]

Ay, here her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
- A Metrical Essay [Flags]

Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,
The lightning and the gale.
- A Metrical Essay [Flags]

The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand,
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
- A Metrical Essay (l. 83) [Politics : Voting]

It cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great wealth
with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World
axiom--Richesse oblige.
- A Moral Antipathy--Introduction [Wealth]

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of
hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
- A Mortal Antipathy [Love]

And when you stick on conversation's burs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
- A Rhymed Lesson--Urania [Conversation]

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we
stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of
heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes
against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
[Innovation]

No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the
man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities
of at least four or five generations.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (ch. I)
[Ancestry]

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on
the railroad tracks.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (I)
[Jesting]

Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a
great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at
all.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (l. 1)
[Education]

Man has his will,--but woman has her way.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (prologue)
[Women]

Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crow-bar.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
[Boston]

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits the all.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
[Lying]

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
[Cities]

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor
its great scholars great men.
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
[Students]

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: "Give us
the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."
- Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
[Luxury : Paradoxes]